Dr. Rodolfo Gari Talks Work Injuries And Ways To Avoid Them

Cyndi: The daily grind of working in an office can cause pain that people often try to ignore, but sometimes that pain can affect your whole life and it should not be ignored. Dr. Gari from Florida Pain Relief Group joins us now with more. Dr. Gari, good to have you back.

Dr. Gari: A pleasure

Cyndi: A lot of people try to just ignore the pain, but if it’s really starting to bother them, and it’s affecting their whole life, why should they go see somebody like you?

Dr. Gari: Well because one of the things, for example, the reason why we as human beings have something called pain is because it’s a warning signal. Think of it like you’re driving your car and it starts to flash saying that the engine oil is low. You’re about to get into something really bad. So if you have pain, from whatever that may be, that’s your body telling you, “Hey you gotta go and get this checked out.” Because it can and normally does get worse if it’s not treated.

Cyndi: When you see people that work in an office environment, what kind of pain are they usually coming to you with?

Dr. Gari: Usually some sort of work-related injuries. Sometimes it’s a fall, you know. I get a lot of patients of mine that are workman’s compensation. For example that they get sent over because they are lifting boxes, they hurt their back. Sometimes they’re typing, they’re using a lot of computers, they get repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel. They get neck injuries, you know, from maybe reading, from having the head too low. Just about any type of activity can happen…if you sit for long periods of time, that can affect your lower back. In fact, one of the biggest pressures on your lower back is when you’re sitting down.

Cyndi: Really?

Dr. Gari: What I tell some of the patients…

Cyndi: I’ve got that. I’ve got it here, I’ve got it here. So and I tend to just think, you know, that’s just the cost of doing business. But I don’t have to live with this pain.

Dr. Gari: Well, you know, in a way it’s some of the things that we do, but there’s things that can be done. For example, if you sit a lot, you can sit on one of those medicine balls. That helps with your core muscles. Also, if you can stand, there’s a lot of these desks that you can actually raise up. And standing actually reduces the pressure on your lower back, and that helps quite a bit.

Cyndi: I’m looking into that. Back to the worker’s comp situation. How does that all work when somebody comes to you with that?

Dr. Gari: Well, the worker’s compensation was meant to help the injured worker. It’s a great program because people need help. What they’ll do is when someone gets injured, they’ll work with the worker’s compensation, they’ll get an adjuster. That adjuster can send the patient to someone like us to evaluate what’s going on. We can make a diagnosis on what’s happening, what’s causing the injury, and what we want to do is help them out and, you know, try to get them back to work.

Cyndi: Definitely. That’s the goal, right? You don’t want to have more time than you need. What about repetitive stuff like typing? I’m just thinking of everyone around me on our computers, just that alone. Do you see a lot of people coming in just with carpal tunnel?

Dr. Gari: We see a lot of that. We see a lot of people with pain. And our hands weren’t made to be typing all the time. It was meant to grab and doing things with it. So things that are not natural, they can cause a lot of injuries. And one of the things about the worker’s comp that you mentioned earlier is that if we can see that patient earlier…the studies have shown very significantly that the earlier that you treat that injured worker, the more likely that he is or she is to get back to work.

Cyndi: All right. Well Dr. Gari, thank you very much. You can contact Florida Pain Relief Group to schedule your same-day appointment. Visit their website or you can give them a call: 844-Kick-Pain. Dr. Gari, thank you again.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rodolfo Gari, MD

Rodolfo Gari, M.D., MBA, founded Physician Partners of America in 2013 after practicing medicine and seeking a healthcare system that benefits both patients and doctors. He practiced as both an anesthesiologist and pain management physician in Tampa before founding his own pain management practice, Tampa Pain Relief Center. In 1999, he built his own surgery center to practice interventional main management in a way that benefited both physicians and their patients. He went on to found Surgery Partners, Tampa Pain Relief Center and Anesthesiology Professional Services, a group of medical practices with multiple offices throughout Florida. After selling the business, Dr. Gari created Texas Pain Relief Group, the first affiliate of Physician partners of America. The company has grown from a single clinic to nearly 30, and from three employees to more than 500.

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